This is no good, Phil thought, not for the first time. You fool of a wizard. He sat on the motel bed, resting his head in his hands, foot tapping in nervous habit. The TV, muted, showed local news. The bathroom door slid open and Phil’s assistant walked out, eyes red with exhaustion.
“It’s positive,” Kate said. “Again.” She tossed the pregnancy test in the trash to join the other three.
“Will you please try my wand?”
Kate rolled her eyes but said nothing.
“It’s perfectly safe. Nothing will go wrong.”
Kate bristled. This wasn’t the first time she’d heard that. Just last week at a birthday party in Texas a failed spell set a clown’s wig on fire. The ensuing scuffle resulted in seven irate mothers, three crying children (the rest laughed maniacally), and a Bozo with third degree burns. “Oh sure, that’s easy for you to say. Let’s put the wand down by your crotch. Abracadabra. Hocus pocus. Nothing could go wrong, right?”
Phil’s hands moved instinctively to cover himself. “You look beautiful,” he said in an attempt at appeasement.
“I look like wet dog and smell like vomit.”
“Please. You know how I feel about this scientific junk,” he said gesturing towards the trash bin. “If those physmatists, or whoever it is you’re always going on about, know so much about the world, then how come they still can’t explain this?” Phil waved his wand and a shower of colorful sparks burst forth from its tip. Kate shot him a stern look and the fireworks cut with a puff of smoke.
“That’s the type of pointless trick you need to stop now that we’re having a baby. It could be dangerous,” Kate said waving away the sooty air. “But I will pee on your wand if it will make you shut up and accept the facts.”
“Deal,” he said handing over 10 inches of yew. “I’ve already set the spell. Just keeping going until it starts to glow.”
~~
Phil paced back and forth across the room. He sat on the bed with a sigh, before resuming his pacing seconds later. “Anything yet?”
“Give it a minute. My bladder can only do so much before it needs to be refreshed,” his assistant shouted back.
I need to stop thinking of Kate as my assistant, Phil thought. All signs point to her being more than that now. Really she had stopped being his assistant that drunken night last month after the show in Davenport. The intervening weeks had been filled with stunted conversation over meals and awkward silences during the hours spent driving from town to town. That is until Kate’s morning sickness broke them both of the routine.
“It’s glowing!”
“Well, what color is it glowing? Yellow for negative, green for positive.”
“It’s blue.”
“Blue? Blue! What does that mean?”
“How in the hell am I supposed know? You’re the wizard.”
“Okay. Okay. I can figure this out,” said Phil pulling out his IPhone and heading straight for the WizardWiki.
“What do you want me to do with this?” Kate asked from the bathroom doorway. She kept the wand held at arm’s length.
“Just put it by the sink. It needs to be boiled,” Phil said not looking up. “Here we go. Blue means…Oh.”
“Tell me already! Are we having a baby?”
“Twins…”
“Twins?”
“Yup.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah.”
They both sat down on the edge of the bed, eyes looking anywhere but at each other. Acceptance began to settle on Phil’s shoulders. It felt awfully like a ton of bricks. He grabbed Kate’s hand with his own and gave what he hoped was a comforting squeeze. “So, where do we go from here?”